Inkjet printers, and thermal inkjet printers in particular, have come into widespread use in businesses and homes because of their low cost, high print quality, and color printing capability. The operation of such printers is relatively straightforward. In this regard, drops of a colored ink are emitted onto the print media during a printing operation, in response to commands electronically transmitted to the printhead. These drops of ink combine on the print media to form the text and images. Inkjet printers may use a number of different ink colors. One or more printheads may be contained in a print cartridge, which may either contain the supply of ink for each printhead or be connected to an ink supply located off-cartridge. An inkjet printer frequently can accommodate two to four print cartridges. The cartridges typically are mounted side by side in a chute attached to a carriage which sweeps the cartridges back and forth within the printer during printing.
While inkjet printers have achieved a high level of reliability, there are times when the cartridges containing the printhead must be accessed by the owner or user of the printer. If the cartridge contains the ink supply for the printhead, it must be removed for replacement or refill when the supply runs out. Even if the ink supply is off-cartridge, the printheads may occasionally clog and need manual cleaning.
Print cartridges have typically required access from a top portion of the printer. In some printers, most if not all inkjet cartridges are positioned within the printer at some distance from any one of the wall members, thus making access from a wall side of the printer impractical. Even if the back and forth movement of the cartridges during printing brings them near to a side of the printer, access to all but the cartridge nearmost the side wall member is not feasible. In other inkjet printers, a latching lever which holds the print cartridge in place must be flipped up from the top to remove the cartridges. In yet other inkjet printers, keying features which ensure that different color cartridges are installed in the correct chute stalls require a substantially vertical insertion of the cartridge during installation. The need for top access increases as the height of the print cartridge approaches the height of the printer, as can occur when cartridges become taller to hold more ink, or printer heights are reduced to conserve space.
While access to install and remove cartridges from a top portion of the printer has been generally satisfactory for most office and home environments, with the introduction of internet appliances such access is not generally satisfactory. More particularly, internet appliances such as cable boxes, DVD players, and other such electronic components must generally be stackable. Thus, it would be impractical to position a top access printer in such a stacked arrangement.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved inkjet printer that could be stacked with other electronic devices and that would provide access to replace depleted inkjet cartridges in an easy and convenient manner.